Nursing Program Mission

Vision

Dynamic nursing education, for today and for tomorrow, for individuals and the global community.

Mission

The Department of Nursing is committed to providing quality education that prepares resilient professional nurses who are caring and practice holistically to meet the every-changing challenges of the 21st Century through a culture of evidenced-based practice. Faculty will support students, peers, the College and the community in this mission through a collaborative, accepting environment and through relationships fostered by mentoring and role modeling.

Philosophy

The philosophy of the Baccalaureate Program of the Department of Nursing is reflective of the values and beliefs from which the NMC mission and core values were formulated.

The nursing faculty believe human beings are holistic and integrated. Each human being has dignity, basic rights and responsibilities, individual needs and a unique internal environment. The human interacts within the environment, which encompasses all external factors that affect the human's well being and speaks to physical, social and existential dimensions as well as various settings. The client is the human recipient of care - individual, family, group or community.

Health is viewed as a dynamic state of mental, physical, social and spiritual well being that maximizes the individual's ability to function in his or her environment. Illness is an alteration in the dynamic state of well being that leads to disharmony between the human self and the environment. Health promotion, illness prevention, maintenance and rehabilitation are facilitated by activities or programs directed toward enhancement, stabilization or restoration of a dynamic state of well being.

Nursing is a caring, creative, dynamic and interactive process that uses scientific and humanistic bodies of knowledge to assist the client in attainment of a dynamic state of well being with a focus on human responses to actual or potential health problems. The nursing curriculum focuses on Jean Watson's science of caring* and is based on the following assumptions. Nursing is concerned with promoting health, preventing illness, restoring health, and caring for the sick and dying. The practice of caring is an integral part of nursing and consists of the carative factors, which are those interventions that result in the satisfaction of human needs. The caring philosophy promotes health and human growth and accepts a human not only as he or she is now, but as whom he or she may become. A caring atmosphere is one that offers the development of potential while allowing the client to choose the best action at a given point in time. Caring is demonstrated and practiced interpersonally and uses the systematic nursing process approach.

The curricular framework incorporates a community-based approach that prepares students to build connections between knowledge and action in an increasingly interdependent world. Students develop the attributes of effective nursing professionals and responsible citizens through focused and meaningfully applied learning experiences. Communitybased education encompasses the concepts of health promotion, self care, prevention, collaboration and continuity of care within the context of culture and community.

The nursing faculty believe that nursing education uses the science of caring and builds on the application and synthesis of the biophysical, psychosocial, computer and information sciences and the humanities. Learning is a lifelong, continuous process through which humans acquire knowledge that results in changes of behavior, attitudes and/or ways of thinking. The faculty view teaching as an interactive process that uses a system of actions to promote the acquisition, application, integration and synthesis of knowledge. Optimal learning is enhanced by interaction with faculty members who use a variety of instructional strategies and settings. Faculty members serve as teachers, facilitators, resource personsevaluators and professional role models. Nursing education facilitates the student in developing interpersonal caring response skills and communication techniques that produce therapeutic interactions within the nurse-client relationship.

Completion of the baccalaureate nursing program prepares the graduate for professional practice as a nurse generalist, pursuit of advanced studies in nursing and enhancement of lifelong learning. The nurse generalist uses critical thinking, nursing theory, research, nursing process, carative factors and clinical skills while assuming responsibility and accountability for providing nursing care to clients in a variety of settings. Additionally, the nurse generalist is able to demonstrate leadership and management skills in organization, change, advocacy, coordination, collaboration and communication. Thus, the nurse generalist promotes the use of lifelong evidence-based and humanistic practice behaviors to change and respond to the health needs and well being of clients in a dynamic and diverse world.